Space Opera Fans discussion

I can think of quite a few stories worth rereading that are centered on getting a spaceship into orbit or further, with a very low budget. Sometimes it’s taking a broken ship from a junkyard or a wreck and fixing it, sometimes it’s some handwavium breakthrough in space drives that gets installed into something not originally intended for space, such as a submarine or even an SUV.

I’m not sure I want to reread Rocket Ship Galileo by Robert A. Heinlein but otherwise it fits this theme nicely.

In A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers Jane (Pepper’s younger self) fixes a wreck found in the equivalent of a junkyard.

Can you think of one on this theme?

Would Ghost Ship qualify? Isn't that the one where Theo has to repair and rehabilitate the self-aware ship?

Ghost Ship works, yes

How about In Ashes Born? I think that's the one where Ishmael and Pip refit the derelict Chernyokova.

Also, The Silver Ships is mostly about rehabbing the Meridien ship.

Both of those are excellent yes

Another one that fits this theme is The Sculpted Ship by K.M. O'Brien. I wish the author would finish the sequel.....

I just finished one that fits this topic: Ganny Knits A Spaceship by David Gerrold

The Sculpted Ship is such a great read! I'd love to see more, but I half suspect the author either had a life crisis or started overthinking the storytelling process and froze up. Such a skilled story, that now I wonder if that's a pen name.

King David's Spaceship by Jerry Pournelle and The Ragged Astronauts by Bob Shaw. In both, the heroes' goal is to get off the surface of their current planet in a very unlikely jerry-built spacecraft. Both are brilliant.

A fighter pilot on a mission to reunite with her daughter.
A cyborg soldier on a quest to regain his humanity.

Mortal enemies during the war, they must now work together to salvage a seventy-year-old freighter and navigate the gauntlet of pirates, scavengers, mercenaries, and other pitfalls that stand in their way after the fall of the largest empire mankind has ever known.

This set includes:

Book 1: Star Nomad
Book 2: Honor’s Flight
Book 3: Starseers
The previously unpublished prequel novella Last Command
The short story “Starfall Station"

Star Nomad was a nominee for the Goodreads Readers’ Choice Awards and also made Amazon’s Top 20 list of Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2016. Start the adventure now!